On the recordJuly 21, 2011
While the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee and my dear friend from West Virginia is on the floor, I wanted to illuminate a little bit of the difficulty on the FAA reauthorization. I share concern with the chairman, as he knows, because we talked in the well last night about our desire for a reauthorization of FAA and how important it is to our economy. But the difficulty between the House and the Senate, in part, has been over the House version as it treated the National Mediation Board versus the Senate's unwillingness to consider any change in current status with the NMB. I have been the negotiator or the runner, or whatever you want to call it, between the two bodies, Mr. Mica and Mr. Rockefeller. As the chairman knows, about 1 month ago I delivered Leader Reid a comprehensive list of requests the House had asked for in the reauthorization. Senator Reid and his staff, after pondering it for a few days, responded that they would not agree to any of the changes that were requested. I then went back and said, well, let me see what I can do to try to find some common ground, and came back with a recommendation I gave to Chairman Rockefeller that said give judicial review to the airlines, which the unions already have under the National Labor Relations Act, to have a balanced treatment in terms of a response in terms of NMB regulation. As it turns out, that was an unsatisfactory offer.…
